WHAT’S THE STORY?
IT was 100 years ago today that the United States of America suffered its only attack on the country’s mainland during World War One.
The small town of Orleans, Massachusetts, briefly became famous for all the wrong reasons after a German submarine shelled the town on Cape Cod.
It was the first time that the US mainland had been attacked by foreign forces since Mexican artillery besieged Fort Texas in 1846.
Unlike Pearl Harbor, the USA and the Central Powers were already officially at war – largely because German U-boats kept sinking American and neutral vessels in defiance of President Woodrow Wilson’s threats that his country would commit to all ut war if the U-boats continued to attack.
WHAT HAPPENED?
IT was one of those U-boats which carried out the Orleans attack on Sunday, July 21, 1918. U-156 was a long-range submarine armed with two heavy guns on deck and a cable-cutting device. The transatlantic telephone cable went along the Atlantic seabed near Orleans and orders to cut that cable explain U-156 being far north of the main shipping areas.
On a hot and hazy day, U-156 under the command Kapitänleutnant Richard Feldt fired two torpedoes at a tugboat, the Perth Amboy, off Nauset Beach. They both missed. U-156 then surfaced three miles offshore and at 10.30am began firing its deck guns at the tug and the four barges it was towing south to Virginia. All five vessels were sunk but all 32 people aboard were rescued. One member of the tug crew, however, helmsman John Bogovich, was seriously wounded and his life was saved only by the prompt aid given by coastguard William Moore.
Most of the 150 shells fired by U-156 landed uselessly on Nauset Beach and the U-boat also failed to cut the cable. Two aircraft from nearby Chatham base scared U-156 away – they might have sunk it if their bombs had exploded – and after sinking more fishing boats, the U-boat went down with all hands in a minefield.
WHAT WAS THE REACTION?
REMARKABLY calm, given that it was the first and only attack on American soil in the war. The Massachusetts newspapers carried blaring headlines, and President Woodrow Wilson was able to condemn the German U-boats even more, but there was no panic on the east coast. The Boston Post summed up the reaction on its front page: “This latest exhibition of frightfulness will only strengthen our arms for the task ahead of us,”
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